Left 4 Dead 2: Edited Australian VersionReview

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IGN AU's verdict on the most disturbing censorship result in Australia's history.

By Cam Shea & Patch Kolan

Cam: Well here we are, Patch, faced with the unenviable task of telling Aussies around the country that Left 4 Dead 2: the heavily edited Australian version (or, the 'ruined version', as we call it) isn't worth the plastic the disc is printed on; that the game has been butchered so badly that we've found it hard to enjoy.

Am I being hyperbolic? Not really – we were frankly shocked at just how badly Valve slashed and burned its way through this game. We obviously knew what had been taken out: wound detail, decapitations, dismemberment, dead bodies remaining on the ground etc., but the reality is so much worse. These elements, you see, have just been pulled wholesale – leaving a hollow shell of a game. It feels like a rush job, and it's particularly galling because it didn't have to be this way.

It appears that EA was more concerned with getting the game on store shelves on time than it was with the finished product. Changes this drastic simply weren't necessary to get this game classified, nor did they have to be rushed through this badly. Granted, the ACB seems pretty inconsistent in what is and isn't acceptable, and granted, the unedited version of Left 4 Dead 2 is significantly more gory than the original, but surely this game could have been toned back to the level of the MA 15+ original – instead of way beyond that? Instead, this heavily edited version represents not only a massive overreaction, but a shoddily implemented overreaction at that.

See all that stuff on the ground? The bodies and gore? Yeah, that's not in our version.

Patch: Look, I'm no sadist – I don't get off on violence, but I do like decapitating zombies. That's not wrong. I must have been leaking the lizard when the Australian Classifications Board suddenly deemed the undead 'too realistic' to be savaged by virtual machetes and cricket bats. Censorship sucks.

You're right though, Cam – Left 4 Dead 2 is a compromised experience; in the last couple of days we've spent extended sessions with both L4D games, and the extent of this censorship is severe. Is there anything wrong with the gameplay? Yes. Is it enough to prevent you from playing the game? Not really. But that's not reason enough for me to get behind this game. When I launch a grenade at a group of zombies, I expect results. I expect impact; if not limbs flying, then certainly flaming corpses or a satisfying gush of blood. What happens in the Australian Left 4 Dead 2? The target zombies disappear - I mean completely and instantaneously vanish BEFORE the grenade hits them.

That is, in a word, absurd.

And zombies are flame retardant, apparently. Smashing a Molotov or detonating a can of petrol sends zombies into an arm-waving hissy fit before rapidly fading away. No flames, though.

Cam: The upshot of all these glitchy-looking edits is that your opponents in this game have no weight, no physicality, no believability. The Classification Board is forever concerned with games where the action is too 'high impact', but the flipside is an experience like this where there's essentially no impact. Kill a zombie and its body will fade away as it hits the ground (if it doesn't disappear before being hit, that is). It makes the experience comical and makes your actions feel like a farce. And you know that expression 'fade to black'? Well that's occasionally what the zombies in this game do – they start to fade, but instead of just fading into nothingness, they flash black before they disappear. One word - shoddy.

By now, all these examples should be painting a pretty clear picture of just how poorly and transparently the edits have been shoved into this game. But before we go any further, let's take a look back at the original Left 4 Dead. What a game that was. We liked it so much we scored it 9.2 and ranked it as the third best game of 2008. Left 4 Dead was classified as MA 15+ and included the following: the ability to blow zombie heads off, the ability to shoot zombie limbs off, wound detail on enemies, corpses that would remain on the ground (at least for a while), graphic sprays of blood that would coat the walls and fleck the screen. Why, then, has Left 4 Dead 2 been butchered so badly? Why is it necessary for it to have NO decapitations (whether via melee implement or shotgun), NO dismemberment, NO wound detail, drastically toned down blood and corpses that fade away instantly?